Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [107]
She put on her shoes and threw her keys into the pocket of her jeans. She raised the slatted blinds. “Hey!” she yelled down into the alley.
“Hey, yourself,” the young man yelled back. He smiled at her and squinted. Apparently he couldn’t see her clearly. That was the second thing she liked about him.
“You can’t throw that kite in there,” she said. “That Dumpster’s only for people who live in this building.” She shaded her eyes against the sun to see him better. The guy’s dog was now standing and wagging its tail.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take it out,” and when she told him not to and that she’d be down in a second and he should just wait there, she knew he would do what she asked. What she hadn’t expected was that he would smile enormously at her and, when she appeared, give her a hug—they were strangers after all—right out of the blue. She pushed him away but could not manage to get angry at him. Then she felt the dog’s tongue slurping on her fingers, as if she’d spilled sauce on them and they needed some cleaning.
He offered to buy her coffee, and he explained himself as they walked. He had once had good prospects, he said, and a future about which he could boast. He had been accepted into medical school eighteen months ago but had come down with a combination of mononucleosis and bacterial pneumonia, and after recuperating, he had lost all his interest in great plans. The two illnesses—one virus and one bacteria—had taken the starch out of him, he said. He actually used expressions like that. He had a handsome face when you saw him up close, but as soon as you walked a few feet away something went wrong with his appearance; it degenerated somehow.
His name was Walton Tyner Ross, but he liked to be called Glaze because of his taste for doughnuts and his habitual faraway expression. She didn’t think someone whose nickname was Glaze was ever going to become a successful practitioner of medicine, but in a certain light in the morning he was the finest thing she had seen in some time, especially when viewed from a few inches away, as they walked down Hennepin Avenue for breakfast.
Stopping under a tree that gave them both a moment of shade, he told her that if she wanted him to, he would show up regularly in the morning from now on. He needed motivation. Maybe she did, too. They would project themselves into the world, he said. She agreed, and on the next few mornings he appeared in the alley with his dog, Einstein, a few feet behind him. He called up to her, and the dog barked in chorus. She didn’t think it was very gallant, his yelling up at her like that, but she had had her phone disconnected, and his passion for her company pleased and moved her.
They would walk down Hennepin Avenue past what he called the Church of the Holy Oil Can—because of its unbecoming disproportionate spire—to one of several greasy smoky restaurants with plate-glass front windows and red-and-white-checkered café curtains and front counters with stools. They always sat at the stools because Walton liked to watch the grill. The first time he bought Jodie a breakfast of scrambled eggs and a biscuit and orange juice. As the breakfast went on, he became more assertive. Outside, Einstein sat near a lamppost and watched the passing pedestrians.
Walton Tyner Ross—looking very much like a fool as he spilled his breakfast on his shirt—was a Roman candle of theories and ideas. Jodie admired his idea that unemployment was like a virus. This virus was spreading and was contagious. The middle class was developing a positive taste for sloth. One person’s unemployment could infect anyone else. “Take you,” he said. “Take us.” He wolfed down his toast slathered with jam. “We shouldn’t feel guilty over not working. It’s like a flu we’ve both got. We’re infected with indifference. We didn’t ask to get it. We inhaled it, or someone sneezed it on